20 Years Later
by Alkaline
Summary: Catcher in the Rye. It's 20 years after CitR, what's Holden been up to? An assignment for my English class, rated for occasional foul language just to be safe.
1. I

I found out where the ducks go. They migrate. They just get up one day and fly to Florida or some place. They spend their goddamned winter down south. That's one of the things I learned in that institution, is where the ducks go when the pond freezes.

Most of the people there were _real_ loonies. I mean, the kinds of people who hear voices in their heads. I didn't belong there. I'll admit, I was having my difficulties growing up. But some of the people there, boy, were they crazy. I spent just over two years in that place.

My parents sent me to this place because it was supposedly some sort of high class joint or something. They paid lots of money to put me there, and it wasn't anything special. I've never been to another institution or anything, but this place didn't seem worth the money. It was small and bland. It wasn't even big enough to have separate men and women's wards. Instead, all the rooms lined two hallways that joined to make an L shape. The women were in the vertical half, while the men were in the horizontal half. Whenever anyone made a comment about it, the officials at the hospital just made up some kind of story about how it was a new thing they were trying out, or something. Or that it was only temporary until they could get the money to expand the building. When I first heard that, it damn near killed me.

There was one girl, though; she's the one who told me where the ducks went. Her name was Mary. Mary Davis. At first, I had a hard time believing she belonged there. She had the longest hair I've ever seen on a girl. I remember her telling me at some point that the last time she'd cut her hair was when she was in the third grade. But this girl, she was something else. She wasn't the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, that was for sure, but she was attractive in her own way.

Like I said, I had a hard time believing she belonged there at first. When we first met, I was sitting in the lounge watching some bad romance movie that happened to be on the TV. I had only been there maybe a week or two. She just plopped herself down in the chair next to me.

"Hi. I'm Mary. Who are you?" she asked.

A few fake names flashed through my mind before I finally said, "Holden."

She smiled at me and shook my hand. "What are you doing here?" she said. "I mean, what made them send you here?"

I shrugged. "My parents didn't want to deal with me anymore. I was giving them a hard time, having a hard time in life. Something like that."

For someone I had just met, I was being awful honest with her. I'd considered lying. I considered lying a lot, actually, but I didn't. I think it was because she reminded me so much of Jane at first.

Mary and I spent a lot of time together. Whenever we were could, we sat in the lounge talking and play chess or checkers. I learned that she was from New York as well, and that she was the same age as me. Talking to her was just like talking to an old friend. I called her Jane on more than one occasion, on accident of course. She just reminded me so damn much of old Jane that sometimes I couldn't get by it.

I guess that's why I was so disturbed when I finally saw why Mary was in that place. They had been cutting down her medications, she told me. Cutting them down too much. One day, rather than meeting me in the lounge like she always did, she spent the entire day in her room alone.

Her room was just around the corner from mine, and across the hall. At some point during that night I found myself awakened by her screaming. Not just shouting, but all out, blood-curdling screams. It took a second for my mind to focus, but once it did I got up and ran to my door, peering out through the square glass panel.

I could see Mary, wearing a thin nightgown, being held back and removed from her room by two of the larger male orderlies. Her tiny body struggled back towards her room. The head nurse, Betsy, was standing nearby flicking the plastic tubing of a hypodermic needle full of some clearish liquid.

At first, I couldn't really discern what exactly Mary was screaming. The sound just sort of entered my ears and bounced around my head. I was too shocked at seeing the person I thought was perfectly normal now being dragged out of her room kicking and screaming. But then her words got clearer.

"Let me go! No! Shut up! Don't touch me! Let me go! They won't leave me alone. Why won't they leave me alone?"

She started mumbling now, and rambling. Betsy injected her with whatever tranquilizer was in the needle. Eventually, Mary's body collapsed to the floor and one of the orderlies picked her up and carried her down the hallway. That was when I noticed the smears of blood on her nightgown and on her arms.

I opened my door and stepped out of the room. The air in the hall was uncomfortably chilly. The orderly carried Mary down the dimly lit hall, but she was still slightly conscious and still mumbling. Her head turned slightly and she stared down the hall at me with the most pained expression I have ever seen on anyone's face. It made me sick to my stomach.

The next day, she wasn't in her room. I found out from one of the other patients later on that she had been taken to the solitary confinement area and locked up. Solitary was the place they took you when you went especially crazy. We called it the Zoo. You got put there when you were dubbed a "danger to one's self or others". They basically just lock you up all alone in this room. The only thing in there is a bunk attached to the wall, with no sheets. They leave you minimal opportunity to injure yourself in any way, shape, or form. The walls are padded, as you'd expect, and there's a huge observation window made of Plexiglas at the end of the room where nurses and doctors keep watch over just about everything you do. They record their notes in your file and make you sound even crazier than you really are. If you want to go to the bathroom, you have to ask and be escorted to one of the restrooms. They feed you three times and day, and usually a nurse will sit there with you until you've consumed a substantial amount of your meal. I hated the Zoo. They only had to put me there once, and I was done.

But that was the point. It was meant to be such a horrible experience that you were forced to keep yourself under control, lest you spend ridiculous amounts of time in the Zoo, which would more than likely drive you even more insane.

It was later on in that same day that I finally found out what was actually wrong with Mary. I had been there, by this point, for something like four and a half months. I'd known Mary most of that time, and she'd never told me why she was there. I'd never seen any reason as to why she would be there. One of the older patients, a guy named George, told me about what was "wrong" with her.

George was a nice enough guy. He was probably about fifty or something, and black. He had matted gray hair that stuck out about a half an inch from his head. Somehow, old George knew about just about everything that went on in that place, and he knew all about just about everyone.

He told me Mary'd come in during the middle of the night one night about a year ago. Her mother submitted her, because she was just too out of control. When she'd first come in, her hands were covered in blood and she was screaming that "they" wouldn't shut up. The nurses cleaned her up, bandaged up her hands, and brought her immediately to the Zoo.

Mary heard voices. One or two highly condescending voices in her head that would often argue with each other, or with her, all in her head. Often times she would believe things that never happened. She could dream about something and wake up thoroughly convinced that it happened. I'd noticed that she had a strange train of thought, but it never occurred to me that this was one of the symptoms of her disease. She was schizophrenic.

It was because of these voices that she developed an obsessive compulsive-like behavior. Mary was obsessed with being clean. She washed her hands probably about ten times a day, another fact that I had noticed but never thought much of. Sometimes that got out of control, though. Old George told me she never felt clean, she always felt as though her hands and arms were dirty and she just _had_ to get them clean. That's why she'd come in with bloody hands that night. The voices were arguing with her about how bad of a person she was, about how dirty she was. She washed and washed her hands but they kept egging her on, saying she would never be clean enough. She scrubbed so hard to get the non-existent dirt of that she'd made her hands raw and bloody. God, the thought of that just made me sick.

I guessed that was what had happened the night before, when she'd been dragged away. She'd seemed fine recently. As I've said, I didn't think there was a damn thing wrong with her. They tried to wean her off her medications, but they were doing it too fast and she broke down. The voices started up again and really tore her apart. She'd turned on the sink in her room and scrubbed her hands and arms to the point of blood. Old George said that when the orderlies were doing their rounds that night they'd found her still scrubbing, despite the blood smeared on her gown and dotting the edges of the sink. George knew everything that went on in the building. He was one of those kinds of guys.

I really started to miss Mary while she was in the Zoo. There was no one else to talk to around there, besides George. But I started getting tired of hearing the life stories of everyone in the joint from this one old guy.

I was starting to get tired of my meetings with my counselor, too. My counselor was an old woman. A tiny, old woman with gray hair held back in the same tight bun every time I saw her. She had little wire-framed glasses that always sat too far down her nose as she looked over the condescendingly at me.

I'd go into her office a couple times a week and sit down in the uncomfortable wooden chair while she looked over my file. She looked over my file every day, at every single one of our meetings, as though things would drastically change from one meeting to the next. She shuffled through the papers and looked up over her glasses at me, asking me how I was and how things were going.

She tried to make me talk about Mary a lot after that incident, but I didn't want to. She said that my concern for Mary showed improvements in my "condition."

My condition, that's right. I haven't yet explained that. The doctors there decided to call me anti-social. At first, it sounds obvious. Anti-social, against society. Well, yes, I was against society. But apparently it's more than that. This one simple compound, hyphenated label was the perfect explanation for all of the out-of-the-ordinary actions I took. My consistent lying, my detachment from people and society, my high and mighty attitude towards people in general. All were accounted for with this one word.

I stopped lying, eventually. Well, not all together, but I stopped the elaborate stories with no basis, and I stopped using my aliases. That was another one of my "symptoms", the fact that I often used some sort of made up alias. My counselor was proud of that. About as proud as someone with no emotions can be, I guess. I swear, she was the least expressive person I ever met. One of those tight faced women who were trying desperately to look younger than she was. She was also "proud" of my genuine care and concern for Mary, and the fact that I had nearly dropped my attitude towards society.

I grew up a lot in that place. I had to. I was on my own and it finally clicked that there _was _no catcher in the rye. That I could very well fall off the cliff if I didn't watch out, because no one else was going to be there to save me. And the same went for everyone else. They had to stop themselves before they went over the edge; there was no way I was going to be able to stop anyone from going over.

When Mary got out of the Zoo, I didn't see much of her for a long time. She kept to herself a lot, and kept quiet a lot. She barely ever left her room, and when she did, she hardly talked. It was like she was broken or something. It made me sad, seeing her always looking so tired and unhappy. She went into the Zoo two more times after that. My time in the Zoo was between her second and third times. I pretty much completely lost control and started throwing things around and screaming and crying. I just wanted to get out, I wanted Mary to be ok, I wanted to go home and see Phoebe. I wasn't crazy, I didn't belong there. They kept me in the Zoo for a while, too, because I just continued to swear and scream and the doctors and nurses behind the window.


	2. II

It was sometime in early 1953 when I got out. I'd given Mary my number; she was still stuck in that goddamn institution. I told her that when she got out and went home to New York, that she should give me a buzz. I'd be glad to talk to her. I went home and moved back in with my parents for a little bit, just long enough for me to find a job.

I never graduated from high school. I never went back to school at all. That made it sort of difficult to find a real, decent paying job. Of all places, I finally found myself at one of the movie theatres near my parents' house. The first movie I remember there was "It Came From Outer Space", a horrible 3D flick that everyone seemed to love. That job wasn't so bad. I didn't like the movies much, but I had an easier time dealing with people now, and I was given lots of hours to work. I eventually made enough that I could move myself into a tiny apartment a few blocks away from my parents.

It was sometime shortly after James Dean's car accident that I moved. I remember that because I remember thinking about what a goddamn phony he was. Always trying to be so cool, until he smashed up his Spyder and died. I'm not saying I'm glad he died, I'm just saying that I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it if he hadn't been so phony.

I got a second job shortly after moving in, working at one of the local diners. I didn't have a car, so my range of work places was limited. For the next few years I bounced around from job to job, trying to have at least two at all times. Those years went by slow, and lonely. There were a few girls here and there, no one I ever cared much for though. Every once in a while I'd think of Mary, and if she was out or not yet. I'd wonder why she didn't call me, if she was out. Or when she'd get out and if she'd call me when she did. I wondered if she had called my parents' place, and they'd neglected to let me know, or to give her my new number.

My parents wanted nothing to do with me. They didn't want me in their house, they thought I was a bad influence on Phoebe or something. I was an embarrassment to the family or something, so after I moved out I didn't hear much from them. I didn't really care much, either. I resented them for sending me to that place when I didn't need to go, and I resented them for continuing to treat me like some goddamn loony.

Then I'd think of Jane. It'd been so long since I'd seen her that I nearly forgot about her. I bumped into her one day on the street; she was dressed like Marilyn Monroe and looked absolutely stunning; it damn near killed me. We talked for a few minutes, and she told me she was seeing old Stradlater again. I had a short flashback of the day we got in a fight, Stradlater and I. When I'd punched him, and he'd given me a bloody nose. So I decided to politely excuse myself from Jane's presence. It bothered me for a long time that she'd changed so much, that she'd reduced herself to his level. But like I said earlier, I can't save people from falling over the edge. They have to do it themselves, and if they fall over, there's nothing I can do to get them back up.

I remember in 1960 finally getting that call from Mary. She'd got out about two years prior to that, but never managed to get home until then.

"So," I'd said to her, "why don't you stop by? We can catch up."

"Alright, that sounds good," she responded. I was glad that she still sounded like her typical friendly self. The Zoo hadn't broken her, that stupid institution hadn't broken her. She hadn't changed that I could tell, and I smiled at that.

She took a cab and came over to my apartment. She looked almost exactly the same as she had when I left that stupid place. She wore a knee length skirt and a turtleneck sweater. She looked nice.

We say around and chatted for a while, catching up on things. I told her about what I'd been doing since I got out of the institution. She told me about her continued time in the institution, and about her two years stuck out in California. Mary and I talked for a long time that night, and before we knew it, it was almost two in the morning. I insisted she spend the night, as I was concerned about her heading home by herself so late at night. She complied with only a little convincing necessary.

She started out on my bed while I slept on the couch, but due to the lack of ability to sleep she begged me to come to the bedroom with her to talk more. So I sat in one of my uncomfortable wooden chairs while she lie in the bed. We talked for a while, and then I watched her sleep for a while; she looked so content and pleasant. It was strange, it reminded me of when I used to watch Phoebe sleep when she was little. Eventually, after God only knows how long, Mary's eyes fluttered open and she smiled up at me, shifting in the bed and lifting up the covers. I smiled back and climbed into bed.

The next morning, when I woke in the bed beside Mary, I was totally and completely disgusted with myself. I could almost literally feel my self-respect, and my respect for Mary, plummeting into the abyss. My mind raced with all kinds of thoughts as I desperately tried to remember the events of that night. But I remembered that nothing happened. I'd just climbed into the bed with her and gone to sleep.

She told me she needed to be getting home, and got herself dressed. We stood by my doorway in an awkward silence for a moment just before she left.

"Well, I had a really great night," she said, "It was real fun."

"Me too," I told her.

I noticed she was wringing her hands again. I noticed her doing it the day before, too. It was her new habit I guess. I sort of figured that she did it when she was nervous or felt dirty. Sort of like a substitute for washing her hands like mad. I just hoped that she was nervous and didn't feel dirty for spending the night with me.

"Well, look, I'll call you later tonight, okay? Will you be home?"

I nodded. "I don't have anything better to do."

She gave me a quick kiss before slipping out the door and leaving me standing there by myself. All afternoon and all night I kept thinking about how she wasn't going to call, that she hated me and everything. I thought about that all day until the phone finally rang and it was her. I don't think I've ever felt more relieved in my life.

We talked for a long time that night, getting to know each other better and all. We talked on the phone a lot over the next few weeks. We started seeing each other more often and everything, and after a couple years we got an apartment together. Since we were both working, we could afford a nicer place than the shithole I was previously at. It wasn't too far from my old place, but it was nice. A couple years before Woodstock, I asked her to marry me.


	3. III

I never thought of myself as the type to get married, really. When I was younger, everyone seemed too phony to me. Everyone's façade eventually falls, and I didn't want to be stuck with what was underneath because I'd fallen for the shell. I figured it would be safer just to never get married, ever. After that day when I took Phoebe to the carousel, though, things starting changing. _I_ started changing.

You should have seen old Phoebe at the wedding. She was 28 years old by then, I was 36. She was wearing this bright blue dress that was long and plain, but she looked so beautiful. She'd gotten married herself in June of 1964. He husband was a decent enough guy. Tall, sort of handsome. At first he'd reminded me of Stradlater, and I didn't like him. But Phoebe forced me to spend some time with him and I realized he wasn't too bad. Their wedding had been small and simple, like mine, and I don't think I've ever seen her happier.

Like I said, our wedding was pretty small and simple. Mary invited her parents and her family, and I invited mine. We invited a few friends, and a couple of our especially liked doctors and nurses from the institution. Mary looked so beautiful. Her dress had one of those corsets, but the skirt was huge and long with lots of layers. It made her look so much smaller and more fragile than she already was, but that didn't bother me. I thought of her as my little china doll, so fragile and beautiful.

The marriage ran smoothly, despite all my fears of what was going to go tragically wrong and ruin it for Mary. I won't bore you with the details. It's sort of all a blur to me anyway.

We got a house in upstate New York. A little cottage in a little town. It's not one of those weird, boring, hillbilly towns though. Mary's too much of a city person for that. We'd had a long discussion about where we were going to move to once we were married. She wanted to live in the city, I wanted to live in a little secluded town. I still wasn't fond of people. Everyone I knew in the city was so loud or phony, and we were losing lots of friends to drugs like acid and heroin and whatever, and I just wanted to get away from it all. So we compromised and picked a decent sized town to live in, with a city nearby in one direction, and lots of woods and wilderness in the other. It's nice here. It almost feels like we're stuck in time here or something. Like everything that's going on in the rest of the world barely effects us here.

Mary got a job in one of the stores in town, just something for extra income. I wrote this book, called "The Catcher in the Rye" about the time leading up to me being committed. I put it under the pen name of J.D. Salinger. It sounded refined or something. I'll probably publish this under the same name. We got a pretty good amount of income off that book, and I'm running another one of the stores in town as well, so we're well enough off for a couple of crazy drop outs.

I eventually got off of the medications for my "anti-social disorder". Mary is still taking medications, though not as much as she used to. She still washes her hands more often than most people, and she can't stand it when things are dirty. Her thought process is still sometimes a little off, but she's getting much better. She hasn't had any major attacks for a good five years now. Even when we went to Woodstock together, she held up well. I was proud of her.

We're expecting a kid in August of this year. I don't know how _that's_ going to work out. I'm pretty scared; I'm not sure how well I'm going to do at this whole parenting thing. Kids were another thing I'd never really honestly considered. It seemed like a lot of work to put into someone who was going to end up leaving you anyway, probably hating you for messing up their life or whatever. I also just didn't really see the point in bringing another human being into this world full of phonies and fakers and everything else. But it's different when it actually comes down to it, when you know you and the person you love are going to have a kid, it's a whole other ballgame.

Phoebe has a kid now, a little girl; she's the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen. I just hope my kid is half the kid Phoebe was. I hope I can raise my kid right, and not end up messing them up. I'll admit it, I'm petrified of having children, but there's nothing I can do about it now. I'll love the kid no matter what, I just don't particularly feel like being the one person who completely and utterly ruins the life of another.

But that just goes back to being the catcher in the rye - something I'm not.


End file.
